14 Responses to Sunday Open Thread

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has communicated in writing with officials several times, a senior federal official, who has been briefed on the investigation, told CNN’s Fran Townsend.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, remains in serious but stable condition with a gunshot wound to the side of the neck, a federal law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said.

It may seem like an over-achieving student going too far—suing her college and professor for a huge sum of money and a grade change. But graduate student Megan Thode may just have a case for her lawsuit. Northampton County Judge Emil Giordana agrees there’s enough evidence to pursue the lawsuit she filed.

An otherwise straight-A student, Thode wanted to become a licensed therapist. She took a required class at Lehigh University in Bethlehem for her desired degree from an instructor who bumped her down a full letter grade—preventing her from taking the next class up to receive her degree—for allegedly failing to participate in class.

This is where the case becomes eerily similar to the 1999 movie Election with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick (A Type-A student played by Witherspoon will do anything to win the class presidency and her teacher played by Matthew Broderick uses his personal hatred toward her to make her lose).

Thode’s attorney, Richard Orloski, is arguing that the instructor, Amanda Eckhardt targeted Thode for being an outspoken advocate for gay marriage.

Now that you’ve been warned about mature content, we’ll let this sorority girl warn you about the emotional roller coaster you’re about to experience: “If you just opened this like I told you to, tie yourself down to whatever chair you’re sitting in, because this email is going to be a rough f–king ride.”

Gawker recently obtained an email sent out to the Delta Gamma chapter at the University of Maryland by one of their own sisters in which the sister (who Gawker has dubbed “Julia”) conveys to her fellow Deltas how displeased she is by some of their behavior. And, in the process, uses the F-word 41 times.

………………………….

1. The Original Offenses: “I’ve been getting texts on texts about people LITERALLY being so f–king AWKWARD and so f–king BORING. If you’re reading this right now and saying to yourself “But oh em gee Julia, I’ve been having so much fun with my sisters this week!”, then punch yourself in the face right now so that I don’t have to f–king find you on campus to do it myself.”

2. The Double Newsflash: “Newsflash you stupid c–ks: FRATS DON’T LIKE BORING SORORITIES. Oh wait, DOUBLE F–KING NEWSFLASH: SIGMA NU IS NOT GOING TO WANT TO HANG OUT WITH US IF WE F–KING SUCK, which by the way in case you’re an idiot and need it spelled out for you, WE F–KING SUCK SO FAR.”

3. Julia Being…Julia: “Are you people f–king retarded? That’s not a rhetorical question, I LITERALLY want you to email me back telling me if you’re mentally slow so I can make sure you don’t go to anymore night time events.”

4. The Punishment: “I will f–king c–t punt the next person I hear about doing something like that, and I don’t give a f–k if you SOR me, I WILL F–KING ASSAULT YOU.”

5. The Sign-Off: “And for those of you who are offended at this email, I would apologize but I really don’t give a f–k. Go f–k yourself.”

A mosque in Cambridge, Mass., confirmed Saturday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Chechen-born brothers suspected in the Boston marathon attacks, infrequently attended services at the small center that was a 10-minute walk from their apartment.

“In their visits, they never exhibited any violent sentiments or behavior. Otherwise they would have been immediately reported to the FBI,” said the statement from the Islamic Center of Boston. “After we learned of their identities, we encouraged anyone who knew them in our congregation to immediate report to law enforcement, which has taken place.”

Anwar Kazmi, a member of the mosque’s board of trustees, told a USA Today reporter that 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died early Friday morning after a shootout with police, was an infrequent attendee for about a year-and-a-half, while 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who was captured hiding in a boat in Watertown on Friday night, attended only once.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was kicked out of the mosque three months ago after he interrupted a Friday prayer service to argue with the imam. The imam leading the service had enraged Tsarnaev by praising Martin Luther King Jr. A congregant told the newspaper that Tsarnaev shouted, “you cannot mention this guy because he’s not a Muslim!” When Tamerlan Tsarnaev later returned to prayer services at the mosque, there were no additional incidents.

Imam Suhaib Webb, of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the city’s largest mosque, said in an interview that he had recently heard of the incident. “That’s a sign right there that his views aren’t mainstream,” Webb said.

The Cambridge mosque leaders’ theology is not extremist, he said. Webb’s mosque has the same owners but separate administration from the Islamic Society of Boston. Webb said he never met the brothers and had not found their names on his mosque’s membership list.

folks were commenting on how all the world’s big and bad were rushing to the microphones to say “it wasn’t me.”

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Chechen Jihadis Reject Tsarnaevs (OSC)

Posted on 04/20/2013 by Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center translates a reaction from the Caucasus Emirate Islamic insurgency on the news that the Tsarnaev brothers are accused of the Boston Marathon bombing. The CEII casts doubt on their guilt and also on the plausibility that these are jihadis, given their internet profiles at Russian-language sites. It does not claim them. For more on the CEII, see this 2011 article at the Middle East Policy Council

The story of the Boston bombings is gaining greater and greater prominence. After the US government announced the suspects to be two natives of Dagestan, apparently, ethnic Chechens Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnayev, interest in the Russian mass media in the Boston bombing grew sharply.

Articles are coming out one after another with various types of allusions, and several commentators have begun to mockingly poke at the USA with their profuse talk: “Look, now (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and (Syrian President Bashar al-) Asad are laughing at the USA, which is supporting the terrorists in Syria.”

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Tune in for the series premiere of Raising Whitley on Saturday, April 20th at 10/9c, only on OWN.

by BooMan
Sun Apr 21st, 2013 at 10:08:26 AM EST
I am seeing too much poor reporting on the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI put out a statement on Friday that said that they had looked into Tamerlan Tsarnaev “in early 2011″ at the request of “a foreign government” that we know now to be Russia. Here is how the FBI explained it.

The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.

I don’t know why they couldn’t give us specific dates instead of saying “early in 2011″ and “in the summer of 2011,” but we have a ballpark idea of when the request came in, when they did their investigation, and when they gave the Russians the conclusions of their investigation. We haven’t seen a complete list of Tamerlan’s travel to and from Russia, but we know he traveled there in January 2012 and stayed in Dagestan for about six months. We know that someone using his name created a YouTube page one month after he returned from that trip to Dagestan. We know this from, among other things, the reporting in today’s New York Times.

After Tamerlan’s visit to Dagestan and Chechnya, signs of alienation emerged. One month after he returned to the United States, a YouTube page that appeared to belong to him was created and featured multiple jihadist videos that he had endorsed in the past six months. One video featured the preaching of Abdul al-Hamid al-Juhani, an important ideologue in Chechnya; another focused on Feiz Mohammad, an extremist Salafi Lebanese preacher based in Australia. He also created a playlist of songs by a Russian musical artist, Timur Mucuraev, one of which promoted jihad, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors statements by jihadists.

Yet, in the same article, we read this:

Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services, said he believed that Tamerlan might have attracted the attention of Russian intelligence because of the video clips he had posted under his own name, some of which were included on a list of banned materials by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.

Let’s do some chronology.

In “early 2011″ the Russians asked us about Tamerlan Tsarkaev.
We investigated him and gave the Russians the results of our investigation “in the summer of 2011.”
Tsarkaev traveled to Russia in January 2012.
He returned from Russia in six months later.
He (allegedly) created a YouTube account a month after that.

There is no way that the YouTube account is what spurred the Russians to request an investigation because he it was created approximately fourteen to seventeen months after the Russians made the request.

This is also relevant to the timing of Tamerlan’s supposed radicalization or increased interest in Islam. We read that he adopted more traditional Muslim dress and grew a beard after he returned from his trip, but now we know from the FBI that the Russians alleged “in early 2011″ that he was “a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010.”

Finally, I also want to note the discrepancy in the FBI’s statement which says that the Russians were concerned because Tamerlan appeared “prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” Yet, so far as we know, he didn’t actually travel to the region for ten to twelve months. Did having the FBI grill him and his parents about his activities in the spiring of 2011 cause him (or his handlers) to delay his trip?

In any case, the reporting by the New York Times is sloppy. Why quote Andrei Soldatov and refer to him as “an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services” if you know that his conjecture is completely wrong and in opposition to the laws of time and physics?

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